Outside the Beltway

The Fast and Furriest Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

Despite opposition from both Republicans and Democrats, the compromise budget resolution passed narrowly last night, but not without some last minute drama

The House approved a bill to protest the President’s executive action on immigration that will go nowhere. The question is whether it will placate the right.

While conservatives have been generally as appalled as others with the news out of Staten Island, some of them are looking in the wrong place for blame.

It’s an old story. Republican leadership wants to avoid a government shutdown, but the hard core conservatives want a fight, this time over the President’s immigration action. We have a week to see how it unfolds.

Some on the right are suggesting that Congress retaliate against the President’s executive action on immigration by refusing to invite him to give the State Of The Union Address.

Top Republicans worry that their party’s response to the President’s executive action will alienate Latinos. However, there’s little they can do about that.

On a preliminary examination, the President’s executive action on immigration appears to be within the boundaries of applicable law. However, as with other exercises of Executive Branch authority, it raises some important concerns about the precedent that it sets.

In the end, there appears to be very little, if anything, the GOP can do to stop or roll back the executive actions the President will announce Thursday evening.

A new poll shows that Americans would prefer President Obama to wait to act on immigration until after the new Congress has had a chance to act on the issue.

Republicans don’t really have many options if the President pulls the trigger on immigration reform via executive action.

Post-election polling shows that the majority of Americans want the new GOP majority in Congress to work together with the President. Republican voters have a very different view.

The GOP’s big wins last week seem to be just guaranteeing that this year’s battle between the Tea Party and the “establishment” will continue.

President Obama’s threat to take action on immigration if Congress doesn’t act by the end of the year ignores political reality,

Despite the conciliatory language after Tuesday, it’s unlikely that much will change in Washington in the next two years.

What happened Tuesday? And what does it tell us about 2016?

The GOP added to its majority in the House, giving it the biggest majority it has had since Truman was President.

At this rate, it’s unlikely the House will file any kind of lawsuit against President Obama until 2015, assuming it ever files anything.

It’s been three months, but there’s been no action on the lawsuit that the House of Representatives said it was filing against President Obama.

The Supreme Court has given the GOP a way out of a battle that they are going to lose anyway.

Could the GOP offer a positive governing agenda if they controlled Congress?

While the battle for the Senate remains up in the air, the Republican majority in the House remains secure.

Speaker Boehner wants to delay a vote on the ISIS war until January, but any such debate will be meaningless because Congress has already abdicated responsibility.

The American public’s support for the President’s war against ISIS has its limits.

Opponents of marriage equality clearly don’t like the idea of a “big tent” in the GOP on the issue.

Despite a high profile effort to oust him, the most prominent libertarian Republican in Congress survived his primary challenge yesterday.

For a party that says its not interested in impeachment, the GOP sure keeps bringing it up.

Once again, the Tea Party has gotten the best of House GOP Leadership.

Your tax dollars, not at work.

According to some reports, President Obama may be about to make an end run around Congressional inaction on immigration reform.

Republicans are dismissing talk of impeachment as a Democratic fundraising ploy, but it may be they are protesting just a bit too much.

Once again the GOP finds itself on the wrong side of public opinion.

A lot of Republicans dislike the President enough to think that he should be removed from office, but will that make impeachment more likely to happen?

Led by Speaker John Boehner, Republican leaders are trying to placate calls for impeachment.

John Boehner’s latest political move is designed mostly to appease the GOP base, but it’s likely a non-starter from a legal point of view.

There are legitimate issues regarding Presidential overreach and separation of powers that President Obama’s actions while in office have raised. But none of that will be discussed in our hyperpartisan political culture.

A clash over Separation Of Power and the Imperial Presidency, coming soon to a Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.

The people with the biggest voices in the GOP seem to be leading it to positions that most Americans disagree with.

The South Dakota Republican Party has officially endorsed the impeachment of President Obama.

The House leadership elections turned out about as expected, but we may be doing this all over again in five months.

GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California won the vote to replace Eric Cantor as the new GOP House Majority Leader. The question is who replaces McCarthy.

There aren’t nearly as many “meta” lessons in Eric Cantor’s loss as pundits have been claiming.